


I'll just have to do my best

by belmanoir



Category: due South
Genre: Age Regression, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-02
Updated: 2012-04-02
Packaged: 2017-11-02 22:20:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/373968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belmanoir/pseuds/belmanoir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fraser and the Rays are changed into their nine-year-old selves and Stella has to take care of them. (Frannie was gonna do it, but she got in a fight with Vecchio and ended up noogieing him and Welsh decided to call Stella.)</p><p>This is a complete fic but it was originally intended as part of a series, so there is no resolution to the larger age-regression arc. The guys are still tiny at the end of the story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll just have to do my best

A loud crash wakens Stella out of blissful, restful sleep. _Oh God, burglars!_ she thinks, bolting upright, her mouth open to scream and her hand fumbling for the bedside phone.

"I didn't mean to!" Ray says from a few feet away. His unfocused eyes are wide and sleepy, and her hi-fi is on the floor. Despite that, his little face and flattened hair above her old Clash t-shirt make her heart clench. If she had done what Ray wanted, he might be next to her in the bed and this would be their son. Although in that circumstance, there probably wouldn't be an enormous wolf at his shoulder, somehow managing to look concerned.

"Do me a favor and wear your glasses," she says. "I spent five hundred bucks on them." Neither her insurance nor Ray's would cover pediatric glasses for a mysterious child.

"Sorry," he says again. "Ben is having a nightmare. A really bad one." Dief noses at her stomach, trying to get her out of bed.

Oh, for God's sake. "I'll be right there." She puts on her robe and follows them to the guest room.

Ray Vecchio has already woken Fraser up. He's rubbing at his side, which makes her wonder if Fraser hit him waking up, but his other arm is around Fraser's shoulders. "Hey, you're okay. I'm not gonna let anything happen to you." It would be funny if she didn't suspect he'd said it before, to his sisters. Fraser is saying, "I'm fine," but he's leaning his head on Ray's shoulder.

When they see her, though, Fraser sits stiffly upright, trying to hold himself away from Ray. "I'm sorry Ray woke you," he says in his precise little voice. 

Stella remembers how mad her father used to get if anyone woke him up. _I've got an important trial in the morning,_ he'd say. _I get up early to pay the phone bill so you can talk to that no-good boyfriend of yours at all hours, so the least he could do is not call after ten._ "You guys can always wake me up if you need me," she tells him. "Come on, come talk to me in the kitchen."

"Benny's fine," Ray Vecchio says aggressively, his little chin jutting out. "I'll take care of him." Ray came to get her, but Ray Vecchio doesn't want her taking Fraser out of his sight. He doesn't trust grown-ups. She's seen it at work, plenty of times, and it never means anything good.

"I know you would," she tells him. "But I'm the grown-up and it's my job to take care of you and make sure you're safe. You're a little boy and it's your job to get some sleep."

Ray's small round face is deeply skeptical. Stella knows how difficult it can be for women to get themselves and their children out of abusive situations, but she can't help a surge of anger at Mrs. Vecchio, who she'd never liked much anyway. She's glad she kept the children here instead of sending them to the Vecchio house, even if she's exhausted and just wants to go back to bed.

"Not everybody does their job in this world," she says. "But I do. Now go back to sleep. Come on, Benton."

He rises obediently and follows her into the kitchen. "Do you like hot chocolate?" she asks.

"I don't need anything." He slides into a kitchen chair and watches her blankly. He might be just as small as the others--a little smaller, even--and wearing an RCMP t-shirt that comes almost to his feet--but he doesn't look like a child. She knows it's wrong to dislike a kid, even if he's a smug, boring know-it-all who sided with her ex-husband in the divorce. But she does.

"That's not what I asked," she says.

"I do like hot chocolate, yes."

She pours the milk into a saucepan to heat and pulls out a couple packets of Swiss Miss. Then she sits down opposite him at the kitchen table. "What were you dreaming about?"

"I don't remember."

She waits.

"Otters," he says finally. "Did you know that otters have an almost worldwide distribution? Of course, I am most familiar with the Northern river otter, but other species include the the hairy-nosed otter, the sea otter, the African clawless otter, and even the giant otter. The giant otter is the longest member of the weasel family--"

She's seen him do this before--derail and misdirect questions with irrelevant facts and observations and anecdotes about life up north. She's always wanted to cross-examine him, to pin him down. Figures that when she finally got the chance, he wouldn't be good at it yet. "You read the encyclopedia for fun, don't you?"

"Well, it does represent five percent of my grandmother's library," he says. 

She leans forward. "Ben, I'm a lawyer. Do you know what that means?"

"It means your job is to understand the law and to use your knowledge to the best of your ability in your clients' interests."

Well, that one wasn't straight out of the dictionary, anyway. "That's right," she says. "It also means it's part of my job to talk to people who don't want to talk to me and ask questions and find out the truth. You're nine years old. You aren't going to win. Tell me about the dream."

Fraser watches her blankly for a while. She sits patiently, and when the milk boils she gets up and mixes the hot chocolate. She slides a steaming mug across the table to him, and he drinks some.

"Well?" she nudges when she figures he's had time to soften up. "Spill."

"A boy beat me with an otter," he says in a rush. "My injuries were serious."

She blinks. "With an _otter_? No, never mind. How serious?"

He pulls the neck of his t-shirt down to show her, and then frowns at the faded white scar, looking a little spooked. "I'm sorry, I forgot. I thought it would still be red and disgusting."

She leans forward to look at the scar. If it's still so visible almost thirty years later--"He hurt you pretty bad, huh?"

He nods, looking at his mug. "I handled myself badly."

"What?"

"I made a poor showing," he clarifies. 

Jesus. "Who told you that?" She can't quite keep the anger out of her voice.

"No one told me."

She raises her eyebrows. "Who said it?"

"My father. But he didn't know I could hear him."

"How old was the other boy?"

"Thirteen."

"And why was he beating you?"

Fraser's small jaw sets. "He was bullying Sammy Rungford," he says indignantly. "I tried to reason with him."

"And how old was Sammy Rungford?"

Fraser hesitates. "Eleven. But it wasn't his fault. He's small for his age, and he was scared."

"Weren't you scared?" 

He licks his bottom lip. "I won't be next time," he says firmly. "My father defeats bigger and stronger men all the time, and he isn't afraid."

"Everybody's afraid," Stella says, feeling sorry for Fraser for the first time in her life. "Even grown-ups."

Fraser looks skeptical.

She tries to think of a way to explain this that would make sense to him. "Fear is our body's way of telling us there's danger. If you ignore that, you can't accurately assess the situation, and then you can't make a good plan to deal with it. Cops who try to pretend they're not afraid get people killed."

He thinks that over.

"What did your grandparents say about the fight?" she asks finally, unable to resist her curiosity.

"Grandma Anne said I had the self-preservational instincts of a suicidal lemming and Grandma Martha said I was just like my father."

She blinks. "Your grandparents were _lesbians_?" she asks, for a moment forgetting he's nine years old. She suddenly realizes she's just assumed the apostrophe went before the s: _my grandmother's library_. Apparently not.

His face goes even more carefully blank; his eyes watch her anxiously. "I don't know what that word means."

"I'm sorry," she says hastily. "Never mind. Just like your father, hunh? Is that a bad thing?" Fraser idolizes his father; everyone knows that.

He looks trapped, unwilling to lie and unwilling to say anything disloyal. There's more to that story too, then.

"Honey, your grandmothers were angry because you were hurt and they love you. Worry makes people angry."

Fraser looks deeply doubtful.

Her heart goes out to him. He needs her so much, he needs so much. And then she's furious, because Ray was the same, he needed her so badly and she loved him so much, and the more he needed her the more she wanted to give him, until she woke up one day with nothing left and didn't know how to get it back. But Fraser is just a kid and it doesn't matter if she's angry or if she has an Angel in the House complex, he still needs her. "Sometimes people can't talk about their feelings," she tells him. "But they still have them."

"I know _that_ ," he says with just a hint of scorn, and she smiles at him.

"But it's nice to hear sometimes anyway, isn't it? So let's practice. I'll tell you five people I love, and then you'll tell me five people you love. Deal?"

Fraser thinks it over, and nods once.

"Okay. I love my mother. I love my father." _Ray_ , she thinks, but she can't say that without confusing the crap out of Fraser. "I love my ex-husband."

"If you love him, why is he your ex-husband?"

No way is she discussing that with Fraser, even if he _is_ a kid. "That's life, kiddo. And I love Mackenzie, and I love my best friend Evvie. Okay, your turn."

Fraser licks his lip again. "I love my mother," he said, and waits for her reaction. She nods encouragingly. "I love my grandmothers." He takes a deep breath. "I--I love my father. And I love Ray and Ray." He looks at her apprehensively after that, like he thinks she's going to disapprove.

She smiles at him. "Good job. And Ben--I don't love you yet, because we just met, but I'm sure I will soon, okay?" She suspects it's true. He gives her that blank stare of his, but she's starting to think that's just what he does when he doesn't know how to react. They drink the rest of their hot chocolate in silence. 

He drags his chair over to the sink and washes his mug. She would have left them in there dirty overnight, and an hour ago his politeness would have irritated her. Now it just seems a little sad.

"Do you want to sleep in my bed tonight?" she asks.

"Why?" he asks as if he really has no idea.

She's nonplussed. "Well...when I was your age, if I had a nightmare my parents let me sleep in their bed. I felt safe there. You don't have to, I just thought--"

"I don't want to be any trouble," he says questioningly.

"You won't be."

"Okay," he says decisively.

Thank God. Stella is so ready to go back to bed. She can't wait for her pillow and her purple comforter...

But Ray and Ray are waiting up. Ray Vecchio is their spokesperson, but Ray stands just behind him, at his shoulder. Some things, they didn't lose when they shrunk. "Are you okay, Benny?" Ray asks aggressively. He doesn't ask Stella.

Fraser smiles wanly. "I'm fine."

"Ben is going to sleep in my bed the rest of the night," Stella says. "Nightmare-haver's privilege. Do you kids need anything before you go back to sleep?"

Ray, having carefully examined Fraser and decided he was fine--although Stella doesn't know what he can see, Fraser must be a blob to him without his glasses--decides to get jealous. "I want hot chocolate too," he announces.

Stella grits her teeth. You can't tell a little kid to stop being a selfish brat. It isn't fair, and anyway Ray only acts like this because of his stupid father.

"Stop being a baby," Ray Vecchio says in a superior voice, and Stella's annoyance recedes enough that she can kneel down and give her tiny ex-husband a hug. 

"You can't have hot chocolate," she says. "We all need our sleep. But I'll make you nalesniki for breakfast, how's that?"

He hugs her back tightly and says, "My mom is the only one who makes nalesniki the way I like them."

Stella knows that, actually. "I'll just have to do my best," she says, and pushes his hair back gently from his forehead as she stands.

"Figures," little Ray Vecchio snorts. "The squeaky wheel gets the grease. Come on, Ray K." He grabs Ray's arm and tugs.

He's right. She thinks quickly. "And I'll make lasagna for dinner, how's that?" It's more cooking in a day than she's done in the past six months.

He looks at her suspiciously. "I don't like it when the mozzarella is too thick. Or if I can taste the garlic."

She's startled. As a grown man, he loved as much garlic in everything as she could stand. 

"I'd better help you so I can show you how I like it," he says with an impressive attempt at casual, and she suddenly realizes he's maneuvering to get her all to himself for an hour.

"That would be very helpful," she says, trying to keep a straight face, and fails when Ray shoots Ray a smug look. This is ridiculous. "Come on, Fraser."

She checks that her alarm is set properly and throws her bathrobe over a chair. When she looks back at him, Fraser is standing there looking at her. "What is it?"

"I--I'm afraid of the dark," he announces. 

"You are? Why didn't you say anything?"

"I was embarrassed." He doesn't look embarrassed, but he sounds a bit more strident than usual so maybe that _is_ embarrassed. 

"Well, my alarm clock glows in the dark," she tells him. "Will that be enough light?"

"Yes," he says, "but I think you should put a light in my room with the Rays too."

"I'll do it tomorrow." 

"I would feel better if you did it tonight," he said firmly. "I'll have to sleep in there tomorrow and I would feel better--"

She sighs. "Fine. Just get in bed and I'll be back in a minute." 

"But please don't tell them what I told you."

"I won't," she promises.

She hurries out into the living room, unplugs her light-up phone, and heads to the kids' room. Ray is standing with his hand on the lightswitch and Ray Vecchio is watching him closely, his arms around Dief's neck. "One, two--"

She walks in and Ray puts his hands behind his back, stops counting, and blinks at her.

She rolls her eyes. "I just forgot to put this back after I cleaned last time," she says, waving the phone. She plugs it in and it lights up.

"I'm not afraid of the dark," Ray Vecchio says loudly.

"I didn't--" Stella begins.

"I'm not a _baby_ ," he insists, and a lightbulb goes on over Stella's head. Shit. This is too much, too much responsibility, too many irrevocable ways to fuck up. Kids are so small and soft and they don't know how anything works, and everything you say goes right in and hurts them. She never wanted kids. She doesn't want kids now. She doesn't want to have to take _care_ of anyone. She wants to go out with Mackenzie and get drunk and dance and not have to worry about every word that comes out of her mouth.

"I don't think you're a baby," she says.

"You don't?"

"No, I think you're very responsible for your age." 

He beams.

"What about me?" Ray demands.

 _You're my favorite_ , she thinks helplessly, but of course you can't have favorites with kids. Not so anyone can see. "It's not a competition," she says. "I think you're all great."

"I'm the tallest," Ray says hopefully.

 _Not for long_. Good thing he doesn't know that. "Yep," she agrees. "Now go to sleep."

When she gets back to her room, Fraser is lying on his back almost entirely obscured by comforter. Only his nose, eyes, and hair are visible.

"You're a good kid, Ben," she tells him. 

His eyes narrow. "What do you mean?"

"It was pretty obvious that Ray is the one who's afraid of the dark," she says. "But you didn't tell me. That was very loyal of you." Only you weren't supposed to tell kids to keep secrets, were you? Whatever, it was too late to worry about it. He trusted her to take him seriously, and help Ray. From Fraser, that seems like a big deal, so she must be doing something right. "And hey, Ben? That fight you got into with the otter kid?"

"Yes?" he asks apprehensively.

"That was really good of you to stick up for another kid like that. Stupid, but good. Not a lot of kids would have done that."

"Ray and Ray would have," Fraser says promptly.

She grins, because he's right. Say what you like about her marriages, both of her ex-husbands are menschen. "Yeah. But I'm still proud of you."

There's a long pause. "Thank you, ma'am." He sounds startled. 

He's not a kid who really invites casual physical affection, but she remembers the way he put his head on Ray's shoulder. She reaches over and ruffles his hair, and to her surprise he giggles and pushes his head into her hand like a puppy. Her heart swells until she thinks it might be breaking open.


End file.
